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    News

    LB PTA Files Suit Challenging Environmental Impact Report Re Expansion Of Airport's Permanent Terminal Area Facilities


    (March 16, 2007) -- The Long Beach Council of Parents and Teachers, Inc. (PTA) has filed a legal action (Petition for Writ of Mandate and Complaint) challenging the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) approved by the City Council (5-2, O'Donnell & Gabelich dissenting) in the final weeks of the O'Neill administration regarding City Hall-sought expansion of LB Airport's permanent terminal area facilities.

    The legal action also contends that the Airport project violates CA Planning & Zoning Law, citing alleged inconsistencies with portions of City Hall's adopted General Plan.

    The L.A. Superior Court action was filed by John Eastman, Professor of Constitutional Law at Chapman University School of Law. Prof. Eastman separately represented the LB Area Chamber of Commerce in challenging LB's Prop M limits on campaign contributions to independent (non-candidate controlled) political committees, obtaining an injunction that currently prevents City Hall from enforcing those limits pending trial.

    Prof. Eastman also successfully represented a LB church facing the start of threatened (now halted) Redevelopment-related eminent domain moves.

    The City Council's June 20, 2006 vote certifying the Airport EIR (Yes: B. Lowenthal, S. Lowenthal, Colonna, Kell, Richardson; No: O'Donnell, Gabelich) spurned the advice of then-Mayor-elect Bob Foster, who said prior to the vote that he believed some important matters weren't properly addressed in the EIR as it stood. Incoming-Mayor Foster said he favored having those issues better analyzed and resolved before the Council voted to certify a document that would serve as the basis for major Airport decisions.

    Prof. Eastman's court filing says the EIR findings approved by the five Councilmembers are "conclusory, editorial, internally inconsistent, fail to state with specificity the reasons for rejecting proposed alternatives, and fail to bridge the analytical gap between the raw evidence and the conclusions."

    LBReport.com posts extended salient excerpts from the court filing, as well as the complete writ petition/complaint in pdf form, below.

    The Council's approval of the Airport EIR is being separately challenged in court by the LB Unified School District, which filed suit last year.

    Filing of the PTA's suit was announced outside Hughes Middle School in the Cal Height area, accompanied by a written statement from PTA President Birgit De La Torre and Treasurer Elena Wraight which stated in part:

    Long Beach Council PTA represents over 15,000 members in the Long Beach Unified School District. We are part of the largest child advocacy organization in the state and in the nation. The objective of our organization has always been to advocate for the well being of children and youth, not just in schools, but at home and in their community. Mounting evidence shows, that environmental quality in our region is deteriorating and the well being of the children in LBUSD is increasingly at risk.

    Long Beach is one of the most polluted cities in the state. We have the 5th highest child asthma rate in the nation. A USC study projected that 6% of our kids will have only 80% of lung capacity by age eighteen. That is not a very good prospect for a successful and long life. Impacts of pollution are interfering with the ability to learn of thousands of our school children.

    The PTA’s mission is to advocates for the most susceptible and most defenseless members of our community: the children. Before deciding on a big project, such as this, we need to know all potential environmental impacts.

    Among the points cited in the PTA's court action filed by Prof. Eastman were specifics of how the Airport proceedings were conducted under the former O'Neill administration [bracketed material by LBReport.com]:

    • On May 11, 2006,...public comments by the LBCPTA and others in the community were met with derision by the Planning Commissioner [sic], with one Commissioner [O'Neill appointee Charles Greenberg] referring to the serious concerns that were raised about the inadequacy of the EIR as "real gobbledygook." Despite the concerns raised by the LBCPTA and many others, the Planning Commission certified the EIR...

    • The LBCPTA and forty-eight other interested parties appealed the Planning Commission’s certification of the EIR...On June 13, 2006, a representative of the LBCPTA appeared before the City Council to again raise concerns regarding the EIR’s failure to fully analyze potential noise and air quality impacts that the EIR failed to study. For instance, the LBCPTA objected to the EIR’s failure to consider the capacity-enhancing potential of the Airport Expansion Project, the failure to conduct adequate monitoring of current air pollution caused by the existing flight operations and the failure to consider at all the increased air pollution that will result from increased flight operations, and the failure to consider cumulative impacts of the Project. Other members of the community raised similar concerns. The President of the Board of the Long Beach Unified School District testified, for example, that while the EIR identified impacts to only two schools, the School District’s own survey revealed potentially significant impacts to at least twelve schools. One elementary school, for example, estimated that over thirty (30) minutes of instruction are lost per day due to over-flight noise...

    • ...Despite the large amount of evidence presented to the City by the LBCPTA and other appellants, and after refusing to offer appellants an opportunity to respond to city staff rebuttal, as had been explicitly promised both orally and in writing, the City Council on June 20, 2006, denied the appeals and sustained the Planning Commission’s certification of the EIR, adopted a statement of overriding considerations, mitigation and monitoring plan, and approved the Airport Expansion Project.

    • ...Also at its June 20, 2006 hearing, the City Council certified the EIR with the following revisions to the EIR without any [emphasis in original] opportunity for public comment to the revisions:

      COUNCILMEMBER RICHARDSON: I’ll restate it. Receive the supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, deny the appeals and adopt a resolution certifying the final environmental impact report for a project to a maximum of 12 parking positions and adopt a program – and adopt a sound attenuation program that would be approved by the Council, apply for funds and go out to bid and adopt a statement of overriding considerations and mitigation monitoring program.

      MAYOR O’NEILL: You’ve heard the motion. Please record your vote.

      MR. HERRERA: Motion carries. Five votes yes, two votes no.

    Five Council votes were required to certify the EIR, meaning any of the five Councilmembers who voted "yes" could have prompted further review by voting "no." Following 7th district Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga's "yes" vote, some still unidentified resident(s) launched a web site urging her recall. Councilwoman Reyes Uranga then tried to seek reconsideration of the Airport item but found herself blocked by Roberts Rules of Order. She then agendized an item on July 11, 2007 (the final Council meeting with Mayor O'Neill and Councilmembers Colonna and Kell) to rescind Council certification of the EIR. It failed 4-5 (Yes: S. Lowenthal, O'Donnell, Reyes Uranga, Gabelich; No: B. Lowenthal, Colonna, Kell, Richardson, Lerch).

    Councilwoman Reyes Uranga did made a successful motion to extend the statute of limitations within which appellants could file suit to challenge EIR, giving city staff and a representative group of appellants an opportunity to try and find common ground and possibly avoid litigation. (Motion passed 7-2; Yes: B. Lowenthal, S. Lowenthal, Colonna, O'Donnell, Kell, Reyes Uranga, Gabelich; No: Richardson, Lerch).

    In July 2006, the LB Unified School District, saying it was concerned that a court might not accept the Council's waiver of the statute of limitations, filed a legal action challenging the Airport EIR.

    On March 7, 2007, Prof. Eastman sent a "Notice of Intent to file CEQA petition" to Mayor Foster and Councilmembers. Attached as an exhibit to the Petition, it states that "representatives of the City have been meeting with a core group of appellants who had challenged the validity of the EIR. Although the PTA was not party to those discussions, it has been kept apprised of them by members of the core group. It now appears that the City has no intention of supplementing the EIR to address the severe deficiencies that have been identified" and the PTA's legal action followed.

    In addition to naming the City of LB, City Council and Planning Commission as Defendants/Respondents, Prof. Eastman's filing names JetBlue Airways as a "real party interest" in the litigation [meaning it can participate]. The action alleges on information and belief "that JetBlue has a beneficial interest in the Airport Expansion Project because of promises made by the City of Long Beach to JetBlue at the time JetBlue introduced service to the Long Beach Airport that the City would undertake new airport construction and renovation projects totaling more than Fifty Million Dollars, thereby providing for expanded commercial airline operations at the Long Beach Airport..."

    The PTA's Petition for Writ of Mandate and Complaint states in pertinent part:

    1. This action involves the City of Long Beach’s (“City”) decision to approve the Long Beach Terminal Area Improvement Project (“Airport Expansion Project”), which will increase the size of the existing permanent facilities at the Long Beach Airport by more than three hundred percent. The Airport Expansion Project will have a significant negative environmental impact on children who live and attend schools in Long Beach, Lakewood, and Signal Hill, California, the promotion of whose welfare is a primary objective of the LBCPTA [Long Beach Council PTA].

    2. The Defendants and Respondents failed to exercise their duties properly as lead agency and decision-making body under the California Environmental Quality Act (Pub. Resources Code, § 21000 et seq.) (“CEQA”), resulting in the City’s improper approval of the Airport Expansion Project without an adequate or proper environmental review under CEQA... Through this lawsuit, the LBCPTA seeks to enforce the provisions of CEQA and the regulations...

    3. In addition to its failure to comply with CEQA, the City also violated the State Planning and Zoning Law by adopting the Airport Expansion Project, which is inconsistent with the City’s General Plan. Thus, LBCPTA also seeks to enforce the State Planning and Zoning Law as it applies to the Airport Expansion Project.

    THE PARTIES

    4. Petitioner and Plaintiff, Long Beach Council of Parents and Teachers, Inc. is...the largest council in the Thirty-Third District PTA...[and] has over 15,000 members, many of whom will be directly impacted by the Airport Expansion Project. The LBCPTA’s geographic area of coverage is co-extensive with the Long Beach Unified School District, which provides school facilities and public education services to more than 95,000 students in 95 public schools throughout the cities of Long Beach, Lakewood, Signal Hill, and Avalon on Catalina Island. These students and their families, including many members of the LBCPTA, will be significantly affected by Airport Expansion Project impacts, in school, at home, and at play in their neighborhoods, undermining the LBCPTA’s core purpose of promoting the welfare of children and youth in their home, school, community and place of worship and securing (and encouraging the enforcement of) adequate laws for the care and protection of children and youth. In furtherance of this purpose, the LBCPTA submitted written comments to the City on the Draft Environmental Impact Report prepared for the Airport Expansion Project; representatives of the LBCPTA testified at hearings before the Planning Commission; the LBCPTA appealed the Planning Commission’s decision to certify the EIR; and representatives of the LBCPTA testified at the appeal hearing before the City Council...

    10. Real Party in Interest JetBlue Airways Corporation (“JetBlue”) is a Delaware Corporation that, upon information and belief, leases a portion of the Long Beach Airport for its commercial air travel operations. The LBCPTA is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that JetBlue has a beneficial interest in the Airport Expansion Project because of promises made by the City of Long Beach to JetBlue at the time JetBlue introduced service to the Long Beach Airport that the City would undertake new airport construction and renovation projects totaling more than Fifty Million Dollars, thereby providing for expanded commercial airline operations at the Long Beach Airport...

    THE AIRPORT EXPANSION PROJECT

    15. The City’s Environmental Impact Report (“EIR”) describes the Airport Expansion Project as the Long Beach Terminal Area Improvement Project, which would involve both alteration of existing facilities and construction of new facilities at the Long Beach Airport. The EIR for the Airport Expansion Project states that the improvements “are being designed to accommodate the demand based on the minimum requirements of the [City’s] Airport Noise Compatibility Ordinance.” (Draft Environmental Impact Report, at p. 2-8.) As described in the EIR, the Airport Expansion Project’s more significant components include an increase in the number of airline gates from 8 to 11, increased aircraft parking spaces from 10 to up to 14, an increase in airline ticketing facilities by approximately 6,423 square feet, and construction of a new parking structure to accommodate 3,451 vehicles. Other proposed improvements include construction of additional office and meeting space, holdrooms, restrooms, concession area, and passenger and baggage screening. These improvements will increase both the Airport’s physical size and capacity. For example, while the Airport served three million annual passengers in 2003, the Airport Expansion Project will increase the Airport’s capacity to serve approximately 4.2 million annual passengers. Additionally, the permanent facilities at the Airport will more than triple in size, from approximately 30,000 square feet to 98,000 square feet, and will nearly double in size from 56,320 square feet if both permanent and temporary facilities are taken into account. (Ibid.)

    16. The Airport Expansion Project threatens significant and far-reaching environmental impacts, including, among others, air quality and noise impacts. 17. The Airport Expansion Project site is located within the City, and within five miles of at least 25 of the schools attended by students who are children of LBCPTA members.

    FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

    18. On or about September 22, 2003, the City prepared an Initial Study for the Airport Expansion Project and circulated it, along with the Notice of Preparation (“NOP”), from September 22, 2003 to October 22, 2003.

    19. Following several scoping meetings and two hundred fifty-one (251) responses to the NOP, in which the community expressed concern regarding the scope of the Airport Expansion Project and its potential impacts, and after the City Council considered recommendations of the Airport Advisory Commission, the City Council directed preparation and circulation of a second revised NOP. The second NOP was circulated between April 14, 2005, and May 16, 2005.

    20. The Draft EIR was circulated for public review beginning on November 7, 2005. The LBCPTA, the Long Beach Unified School District, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, CalTrans, the City of Seal Beach, the City of Huntington Beach, and other affected parties expressed serious concerns regarding the Airport Expansion Project through the submission of written comments to the City. The LBCPTA and others submitted comments addressing, among other things, the Draft EIR’s failure to consider reasonable alternatives (including a terminal modernization project that did not increase the number of gates or airplane pads), its failure to conduct adequate noise and air quality assessments, its failure to investigate the potential impacts of single-event noise on educational, sleep, and recreational activities, and its failure to consider growth-induced impacts, all of which would likely severely impact the student-children of LBCPTA members and their families.

    21. On May 11, 2006, a representative of the LBCPTA appeared before the Planning Commission to raise issues regarding the Airport Expansion Project’s potential to facilitate increased airline operations, and the related air quality and noise impacts that could occur. The public comments by the LBCPTA and others in the community were met with derision by the Planning Commissioner, with one Commissioner referring to the serious concerns that were raised about the inadequacy of the EIR as “real gobbledygook.” Despite the concerns raised by the LBCPTA and many others, the Planning Commission certified the EIR, adopted a statement of overriding considerations and mitigation and monitoring plan, and approved, in concept, the site plan review for the Airport Expansion Project at its May 11, 2006, meeting.

    22. The LBCPTA and forty-eight other interested parties appealed the Planning Commission’s certification of the EIR and approval of the site plan review for the Airport Expansion Project to the City Council. On June 13, 2006, a representative of the LBCPTA appeared before the City Council to again raise concerns regarding the EIR’s failure to fully analyze potential noise and air quality impacts that the EIR failed to study. For instance, the LBCPTA objected to the EIR’s failure to consider the capacity-enhancing potential of the Airport Expansion Project, the failure to conduct adequate monitoring of current air pollution caused by the existing flight operations and the failure to consider at all the increased air pollution that will result from increased flight operations, and the failure to consider cumulative impacts of the Project. Other members of the community raised similar concerns. The President of the Board of the Long Beach Unified School District testified, for example, that while the EIR identified impacts to only two schools, the School District’s own survey revealed potentially significant impacts to at least twelve schools. One elementary school, for example, estimated that over thirty (30) minutes of instruction are lost per day due to over-flight noise. Another school experienced noise-related interruptions in its speech and language therapy center. At yet another school, teachers noted that students with autism are particularly sensitive to and distracted by over flight noise. In addition to interruptions within the classroom, the School District’s survey also indicated that outdoor activities, such as concerts, also suffer interference due to airplane noise. One teacher reported that the interruption extends beyond any single noise event, because it interferes with the learning environment.

    23. Despite the large amount of evidence presented to the City by the LBCPTA and other appellants, and after refusing to offer appellants an opportunity to respond to city staff rebuttal, as had been explicitly promised both orally and in writing, the City Council on June 20, 2006, denied the appeals and sustained the Planning Commission’s certification of the EIR, adopted a statement of overriding considerations, mitigation and monitoring plan, and approved the Airport Expansion Project.

    24. Also at its June 20, 2006 hearing, the City Council certified the EIR with the following revisions to the EIR without any opportunity for public comment to the revisions:

    COUNCILMEMBER RICHARDSON: I’ll restate it. Receive the supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, deny the appeals and adopt a resolution certifying the final environmental impact report for a project to a maximum of 12 parking positions and adopt a program – and adopt a sound attenuation program that would be approved by the Council, apply for funds and go out to bid and adopt a statement of overriding considerations and mitigation monitoring program.

    MAYOR O’NEILL: You’ve heard the motion. Please record your vote.

    MR. HERRERA: Motion carries. Five votes yes, two votes no.

    In addition, following certification of the EIR, the City Council revised the Airport Expansion Project by reducing its size from approximately 102,000 square feet to approximately 98,000 square feet...

    PETITION FOR WRIT OF MANDATE AND COMPLAINT

    27. In approving the Airport Expansion Project, the City violated CEQA in several respects. First, the Final EIR fails to comply with CEQA because it fails to provide an adequate project description.

    28. Second, the EIR fails to comply with CEQA because it fails to adequately assess and evaluate Project impacts.

    29. Third, the EIR fails to comply with CEQA because it fails to adequately consider and adopt all feasible mitigation measures.

    30. Fourth, the EIR fails to comply with CEQA because it fails to consider a reasonable range of alternatives.

    31. Fifth, Defendants and Respondents failed to prepare legally adequate findings.

    32. Sixth, Defendants and Respondents failed to prepare adequate responses to comments timely received on the Draft EIR.

    33. Seventh, Defendants and Respondents failed to recirculate the Draft EIR following the submission of evidence indicating a potentially significant environmental impact that the Draft EIR failed to consider, and indicating that the Draft EIR was so inadequate that it precluded public review and comment.

    34. Eight, Defendants and Respondents failed to recirculate the Draft EIR following the revisions to the Project on June 20, 2006, thereby precluding analysis of potential impacts from the revisions to the Project adopted by the City Council and depriving the public of the opportunity to review and comment on those revisions...

    FIRST CAUSE OF ACTION [violations of CEQA]

    42. The EIR describes the Airport Expansion Project as comprising only improvements to existing airport facilities. The EIR further states that increased flights could occur pursuant to the City’s Airport Noise Compatibility Ordinance, but claims that such increase would be permitted regardless of whether the Airport Expansion Project is approved. The EIR contains evidence, however, that the facilities improvements will facilitate and support such increased airline flights to and from the Airport. Additionally, while the EIR contains an analysis of an “Optimized Flight” scenario that addresses potential impacts resulting from increased flights, the EIR continues to claim that such impacts could result regardless of the Airport Expansion Project, and are, therefore, not Project impacts.

    43. The EIR fails to include significant information regarding the scope of the Airport Expansion Project. For example, the EIR never indicates how many additional flights the airport could support as a result of the increased capacity envisioned in the proposed Airport Expansion Project...

    47. The EIR fails to consider adequately the significant environmental impacts of the Airport Expansion Project, including, but not limited to, significant impacts related to air quality, noise, land use planning, and growth-inducing impacts.

    48. The EIR’s analysis of air quality is inadequate in several respects. For example, the Draft EIR failed to include information regarding model output for its carbon monoxide hot spots and criteria pollutants modeling. As a result of this omission, results could not be verified. Further, evidence submitted to the City indicates that the EIR failed to account for particulate matter emissions adequately, and that further study of such potential impacts is warranted. In addition, as city staff and city consultants have acknowledged, the number and location of air pollution monitors was inadequate.

    49. The EIR’s analysis of potential noise impacts is similarly flawed. In particular, the EIR completely failed to analyze potentially significant single-event noise impacts, despite evidence of adverse consequences on schools and the adjoining residential neighborhoods in which students live, among others, and despite the Noise Element’s statement that measurement of single-event noise is a more direct method of assessing aircraft noise, because the report’s authors claimed that there are no adopted standards to address such impacts. Additionally, the EIR failed to analyze fully the impacts resulting from low-level flight patterns.

    50. The EIR failed to analyze the land use implications of the Airport Expansion Project adequately. In particular, the EIR failed to analyze how increasing the capacity of the airport, and reasonably foreseeable increases in airport activity as a result, may affect future upgrading and siting of schools in the Airport Expansion Project vicinity.

    51. Finally, as a result of the EIR’s stunted Project description, the EIR fails to analyze growth-inducing impacts of the Airport Expansion Project adequately. Rather, the EIR assumes that all flight increases would result only from optimization of operations under the existing Noise Ordinance...

    54. The EIR failed adequately to address mitigation of impacts such as air quality and noise, despite specific suggestions for feasible mitigation. For example, the only mitigation identified in the EIR to address noise impacts is to implement a land use compatibility program to provide noise attenuation for residents within the 65 CNEL contour and schools within the 60 CNEL contour. This measure is inadequate because it fails to include any detailed information about the contents of the proposed program. Moreover, that measure does nothing to address the potentially significant single-event noise impacts identified by several commentors. The LBCPTA and others suggested feasible mitigation to address such impacts. The EIR, however, failed to analyze the feasibility or effectiveness of those, or any, mitigation measures to address single-noise events. The Final EIR does not provide an adequate justification for the conclusion that the noise impacts will be less than significant. Accordingly, the proposed mitigation is insufficient to reduce potential impacts to below a level of significance.

    55. The EIR must evaluate a reasonable range of alternatives...In addition to the proposed Airport Expansion Project, the EIR purports to analyze two alternatives plus a no-Project alternative. The two alternatives are nearly identical to the proposed Airport Expansion Project, except for minor variations in the size of certain facilities. Significantly, the alternatives and the proposed Airport Expansion Project include the same number of airline gates, same number of aircraft parking positions, and same number of vehicular parking spaces, the very items that are most likely to result in growth-induced impacts. Several commentors, including the LBCPTA, urged the City to analyze alternatives that would constrain additional flights. In fact, both the 2003 and 2005 NOP [Notices of Preparation of EIR] indicated that the EIR would include such alternatives. The EIR failed to do so. As a result, impacts resulting from the Airport Expansion Project were found to be “similar in nature” to impacts resulting from the alternatives. The EIR failed to include alternatives that the LBCPTA repeatedly requested and which are designed to reduce impacts, particularly the growth-induced impacts. In addition to the inadequate analysis of alternatives in the Draft EIR, the Final EIR failed to include any substantial evidence to justify rejection of a constrained-capacity alternative.

    57. The EIR violated CEQA because it failed to discuss feasible alternatives in detail and because it failed to revise and recirculate the EIR for additional comment regarding the alternatives proposed by the LBCPTA and other commentors...

    59. Defendants’ and Respondents’ actions certifying the Final EIR constitute an abuse of discretion in that the findings are not supported by substantial evidence in the record and fail to comply with CEQA and the State CEQA Guidelines. Among other things, the findings are conclusory, editorial, internally inconsistent, fail to state with specificity the reasons for rejecting proposed alternatives, and fail to bridge the analytical gap between the raw evidence and the conclusions. Additionally, independent of Airport Expansion Project approval, Defendants and Respondents appeared to improperly condition certification of the EIR on certain limitations to the Airport Expansion Project, adoption of a sound attenuation program, and adoption of a statement of overriding considerations and mitigation monitoring plan.

    60. Defendants and Respondents found that: (1) certain identified environmental impacts were not significant when there was no substantial evidence in the record supporting the finding; or (2) certain identified significant adverse environmental impacts were considered mitigated below a level of significance, but Defendants and Respondents failed to adopt adequate mitigation measures to justify these conclusions.

    63. The EIR violated CEQA because Defendants and Respondents failed to respond adequately to comments, suggestions, and recommendations about the Airport Expansion Project’s impacts, mitigation measures, alternatives, and other matters, as alleged above...

    SECOND CAUSE OF ACTION [Project inconsistency with City’s General Plan]

    ..71. All Projects approved by the City must be consistent with its General Plan...

    72. The Airport Expansion Project is inconsistent with the City’s General Plan in several respects. The Land Use Element states, for example, that “Long Beach resists pressures to expand operations at Long Beach Airport to accommodate regional air travel needs.” (City of Long Beach General Plan, Land Use Element, Pages 1.10.11). The Land Use Element further states, “Long Beach has adopted a firm policy to limit growth of its airport in order to protect surrounding residential neighborhoods from the noise and other hazards of frequent over flights.” (City of Long Beach General Plan, Land use Element, Page 1.11). However, despite these declarations of City Policy, the Airport Expansion Project is specifically intended to accommodate more than the flight capacity required by the settlement agreement, irrespective of local air travel need.

    73. The Transportation Element also calls for reducing single-occupant vehicle trips by 20% and encouraging alternate transportation. (City of Long Beach General Plan, Transportation Element, Policy 5.1.4). The Airport Expansion Project does not provide for such measures. Similarly, the Airport Expansion Project’s failure to include measures to encourage carpools, vanpools, shuttles or other means of reducing per passenger vehicle trips, runs counter to the Air Quality Element’s policies supporting reduction in automobile usage. (City of Long Beach General Plan, Air Quality Element, Policy 2.1). In addition, and perhaps most importantly, the Airport Expansion Project will have both construction and operational noise impacts. The Noise element of the General Plan states that “the thrust of this report is that many things can be done to control noise.” (P. 10.iii.) However, the Airport Expansion Project includes little in the way of mitigation or control of noise pollution.

    74. In addition, the Noise element states: “[T]he prime objective in any composite noise rating scheme should be validity in terms of human response to aircraft noise.” (P. 10.66). Based on the Airport Expansion Project EIR, the City has failed to evaluate the validity of its chosen method of noise rating (CNEL) in light of this specific statement. The Noise element further states: “A more direct method of evaluating the impact of aircraft noise is to assess the single event exposure levels.” (Emphasis added). The Noise element recognizes the impacts of increased flight operations on speech conversations: “one measure of intrusion is the speech interference caused by the [single event] noise… With a total of about 12-15 jet operations each day, this amounts to approximately 3 minutes per day above 65 dBA.” (P.10.68). This amounts to about 22 minutes of speech intrusion per day based on 41 commercial and 25 commuter flights, not to mention impacts from potential increases in flights due to the Airport Expansion Project’s capacity-enhancing improvements. The Airport Expansion Project does not currently include mitigation measures based on the Airport Expansion Project’s impacts in terms of single events.

    ...

    THIRD CAUSE OF ACTION [Declaratory Relief]

    ...80. The LBCPTA seeks a judicial declaration and determination of the respective rights and duties of these Defendants and Respondents to abide by their duties and obligations. 81. A judicial declaration and determination is necessary and appropriate at this time in order that the LBCPTA may ascertain its rights with respect to the duties and obligation of each of these Defendants and Respondents and in order to resolve all controversies between the parties hereto regarding such rights and duties...

    FOURTH CAUSE OF ACTION [Injunctive relief]

    84. The LBCPTA brings this action because the LBCPTA, its members and the students and families it represents, and the general public will suffer irreparable injury if Defendants’ and Respondents’ actions are not immediately set aside. Defendants and Respondents have approved the Airport Expansion Project. If Defendants and Respondents are not immediately enjoined and stayed from taking further actions to carry out the Airport Expansion Project, pending resolution of this lawsuit on its merits, the LBCPTA, its members and the students and families it represents, and the general public will be irreparably harmed and forced to incur considerable environmental damage. The public interest warrants the issuance of a writ of mandate, a temporary restraining order and the preliminary and permanent injunctions requested by the LBCPTA.

    85. The LBCPTA has no adequate remedy at law for the injuries alleged herein in that the LBCPTA has exhausted all administrative remedies, and damages cannot compensate for the threat that the Airport Expansion Project poses to the LBCPTA, its members and the students and families it represents, and the general public.

    86. The LBCPTA requests that this Court issue a temporary restraining order, a preliminary and permanent injunction enjoining Defendants and Respondents and Real Parties in Interest from taking any action in furtherance of the Airport Expansion Project until Defendants and Respondents have complied with all applicable laws and regulations.

    PRAYER

    WHEREFORE, the LBCPTA prays for judgment as follows:

    ON THE FIRST CAUSE OF ACTION

    1. For a writ of mandate pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure sections 1085 and 1094.5 and Public Resources Code section 21167 directing Defendants and Respondents as follows:

    A. To cease, vacate, and set-aside all actions related to the authorization, approval, and execution of the proposed Airport Expansion Project;

    B. To prepare and circulate, in compliance with CEQA and the State CEQA Guidelines, an adequate EIR to examine and fully mitigate any significant impacts to the environment; and

    C. To prohibit any action by Defendants and Respondents or Real Parties in Interest in furtherance of the Airport Expansion Project until Defendants and Respondents comply with the mandates of CEQA.

    ON THE SECOND CAUSE OF ACTION

    2. For a peremptory writ of mandate ordering Defendants and Respondents to comply with California Planning and Zoning Law by adopting a Airport Expansion Project that is consistent with the City’s General Plan.

    ON THE THIRD CAUSE OF ACTION

    3. That this Court declare that Defendants and Respondents have not complied with the requirements of CEQA with respect to the failure to prepare an adequate EIR and that the Defendants and Respondents must prepare an adequate EIR for the Airport Expansion Project in order to meet these requirements.

    ON THE FOURTH CAUSE OF ACTION

    4. That this Court issue a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction and permanent injunction, all preventing Defendants and Respondents and/or Real Parties in Interest from taking any action in furtherance of the Airport Expansion Project until and after Defendants and Respondents comply with CEQA.

    ON ALL CAUSES OF ACTION

    5. For an award of attorneys’ fees incurred in this matter as permitted or required by law;

    6. For the LBCPTA’s costs of suit incurred herein; and

    7. For such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.

    DATED: March 15, 2007

    JOHN C. EASTMAN
    Attorney for Petitioner and Plaintiff
    LONG BEACH COUNCIL OF PARENTS AND TEACHERS, INC.

    To view the writ petition/complaint in full in pdf form, click here.


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